One of my favorite memories about growing up in my family would be staying at our grandmother’s house, or getting together with cousins at our house or one of theirs, and frequently getting drawn into deep and rambling conversations that would last well into the night, sometimes even until the sunrise.
I clearly remember a conversation like that I had with my cousin Chris years ago. We were at the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life event in my hometown. I was staying up the entire night to chronicle my experiences for the local newspaper, and Chris had decided he was going to stay on the track and continue walking overnight until the relay ended at 6:00 AM. Which he totally did, by the way.
To keep myself awake and to support Chris, I spent a lot of my time walking with him. While we let our conversation wander through any number of topics, Chris brought up a point that had a big effect on how I saw the world. I had my iPod with me, and I said something about one of the songs on whatever playlist I had created for the night being a guilty pleasure. Chris pointed out that music should never be thought of as a guilty pleasure, because anyone lucky enough to have music that gives them pleasure has nothing to feel guilty about. Years later I was on a road trip with Chris and his wife, and I heard everything from Rob Zombie to Barry Manilow to Megan Trainor come up on his iPod; this is a guy who practices what he preaches. The only reason I’m citing those three examples is to highlight exactly how diverse his musical tastes are, and how he can enjoy and include all of them without shame.
I almost said “shameless” there, but did a quick self-edit because the word didn’t fit. “Shameless” sounds more like when someone should be ashamed of something but they don't have the presence of mind to realize it. That’s not Chris.
Yesterday I was talking with a different Chris, the media guy at school (who seems to have become something of a secondary character in my May blog posts this year). He was telling me about a conversation he had with a friend that amounted to “If someone were to scroll through your iPod, what surprises would you have on it that wouldn’t fit with the rest of your music? What would be the song or the album you almost wouldn’t want other people to know was there?” I told him about what my cousin Chris had said, which he immediately agreed with. Here was a guy about my age who is currently reading through Chuck Klosterman’s scholarly heavy metal examination Fargo Rock City, and relates to it possibly even more than I do. We were in a group of people from school who saw AFI, 30 Seconds to Mars, and Linkin Park at State Fair two summers ago, and he’s proudly telling me how he could still sing along with almost every lyric on Air Supply’s greatest hits. Soon after that, my teaching partner wandered into the conversation and demonstrated how she could still recall not just the lyrics but even the cadence to the bridge in Metallica’s “One.”
I don’t know what high school is like now, but back in my day (I’m pulling a total Chris Hardwick Grandpa Gen X here) if you didn’t like the right music or even if you didn’t pick the right t-shirt at a concert you saw, that was reason enough to get you thoroughly ostracized. One of the reasons this was so effective back then is because, collectively, me and all the other high school jerks of the time allowed other people too much influence in dictating what we loved.
But why? Why should I care what music anyone else listens to, or if they’d like any of mine? As much as I reference Dream Theater on Facebook, what difference would it make if I’m the only reason someone has even heard of the band, or even realized it was band instead of an actual theater?
If we share an interest, that can become a great connection. If we don’t agree, it shouldn’t matter because we can both still independently love what we have claimed as ours. And why should it stop at music? Thinking about this, I feel I owe an apology to someone I’m pretty sure is reading this, since only days ago I looked at her like she had three heads when she said she thought “The Big Bang Theory” is funny. Clearly I disagree. But what would that have to do with her?
Movies, television shows (even reality TV), books, podcasts, magazines? Any kind of entertainment we consume, anything that we’re lucky enough to discover and love and claim as a part of our lives? We should all be able to own those choices without ever having to worry about someone else using any of them as a weapon of snark. I know I’ve done quite a bit of exactly that in my past, and even though it’s something I’ve tried to be more aware of in recent years, I know I’ll still slip from time to time. For that, I apologize to anyone I may have irritated by stupid little comments I probably found more amusing than they did.
So like what you like, people. Own it proudly. Listen to your music, watch your movies, read your tabloids if they enrich your life in any way decide is meaningful. I promise to do my best to steer clear of cracking any jokes about your choices, as long as I can still listen to my progressive metal, play my video games, see my Marvel movies, and watch “Big Brother” three nights a week in the summertime.
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